Sports
Numbers aren’t backing up Dickwella
by Rex Clementine
Ever wonder why a 19-year-old Asanka Gurusinha made his Test debut as a wicketkeeper in Karachi in 1985? Well, the team’s wicketkeeper Amal Silva had been given clear instructions not to hook, but yet he tried his luck and was dismissed and had hell to pay. The team’s supremo Abu Fuard ran Sri Lankan cricket with an iron fist those days. No one crossed his path. Nobody defied his orders.
Had Abu been living today, on the cricket team’s return to the team hotel after a day-night game at Suriyawewa, he would have told Niroshan Dickwella to get off the team bus in middle of the road. That road is as good as a jungle and wondering around there after nightfall is not the most sensible thing to do. Abu did not treat adults with kids’ gloves. Sink or swim was his theory.
There’ll be those who say that times have changed and Abu’s methods wouldn’t have worked in the modern day. But how else would you get Dickwella to fall in line? After nearly ten years of Test cricket and more than 50 Tests, he’s yet to make a hundred. Only a no nonsense approach will work with him.
Ricky Ponting had an altercation in a nightclub and Cricket Australia came down hard on him. It required Steve Waugh to sit down the young prodigy and to make him realize his potential.
Virat Kohli walked into the big stage at the same time IPL was launched. He went to the franchise owned by showman Vijay Mallaya – Royal Challengers Bangalore. Whether they were winning in cricket or not, off the field RCB were doing it all in grand style. Their after match parties were legendary.
Like in the case of Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar had to take Kohli under his wing and make him realize that he could go onto become world’s best batter if he focused on his cricket.
Dickwella will turn 30 this year. There’s no point of sitting him down now. Even if Viv Richards comes and talks, he’d be in no mood to listen as he lives in his own world reminding us that in the world of blind the one eyed man is king.
The selectors are already giving indications of needing to move on. It’ll be a crime to see Nishan Madushka carrying drinks at the Basin Reserve where the second Test will be played after the prolific year he’s had.
keeping has been flawless. It’s his batting that irritates people. A low full toss had got him trapped leg before wicket in the first innings. To add insult to injury, Dickwella went onto burn a review. If Sri Lanka win the first Test, captain Dimuth Karunaratne will argue that he needs to play the winning team and the captain’s wish should be granted. But you can sense that patience is running thin.
Before the start of the first Test. Dimuth defended Dickwella. He argued that in Test match cricket you need to have your best keeper on show. Fair point. The captain also went onto touch on Prasanna Jayawardene days. How he had kept other keepers at bay.
There should be no comparison between PJ and Dickwella. PJ is by far one of the best keepers to play the game. Plus, his 58 Tests produced four hundreds and a Player of the Series award in England. His only blemish was turning down the Test captaincy in 2011 at Rose Bowl when Duleep Mendis offered it to him on a platter.
A closer look at the manner in which Dickwella moves about things will also suggest that he’s a team player and which is why Dimuth throws his weight behind him. But the selectors look for only one thing in the end and that’s numbers. Sadly, Dickwella is not covering himself with glory when it comes to numbers. First they axed him from the white ball teams and now they are all out to get rid of him from the Test side and you can’t really find fault with the selectors. Dickwella was one of the three players who was sent home from England for breaching COVID protocols in 2021. His comeback game was in Mohali. Usually when players come after such bans they have a point to prove and fight it out in the middle. How did Dickwella’s comeback go? Ravindra Jadeja tempted him to sweep with two fielders square of the wicket waiting for the top edge and our man fell into the trap hitting it straight to square leg fielder.
Some say the sweep is Dickwella’s bread and butter. Well, if your staple diet is continuously giving you an upset stomach, you have an easy choice to make. Not Dickwella though.
When Dickwella was about to make it to the senior side, his school coach at Trinity College Sampath Perera predicted a bright future for the lad, but hoped that he maintained his discipline. Perera perhaps knows that the national cricket team is a place of distraction and you need to keep your focus.
Dickwella is an immensely skillful cricketer. He’s able to get under the skin of the opposition, he’s creative and well versed in laws of cricket and plays to win. These are characteristics any captain would love. Ideally, today he should be Dimuth’s understudy. But sadly Dickwella and numbers don’t match up. He’s got to redeem himself in the second innings. Or there will be curtains. It will be a shame. You don’t find many players scooping Kagido Rabada thunderbolts clocked at 150 kmph.
The first truly heavyweight clash of this expanded T20 World Cup format comes freighted with both history and subplots. A rematch of the 2010 World T20 final at Kensington Oval, the match pits Jos Buttler’s defending champions – who are aiming to become the first team to retain the trophy – against the Australian winning machine, victors at the 2021 edition and current world title-holders in Test and ODI cricket. And that’s before you throw in the Ashes for afters.
Already there is added pressure on England, after the rain in Bridgetown led to a share of the points in their opener against Scotland (and that having conceded 90 runs from 10 overs without taking a wicket in a tepid bowling display). Lose to their oldest rivals and it will leave their Super 8 prospects open to being waylaid by the perils of net run-rate calculations, or worse.
The Scotland match was the third abandonment in five suffered by England, after a rain-affected home series against Pakistan, which has clearly hampered their readiness for this campaign after almost six months without playing T20 together. It does not take much for a side to click in this format – and England looked in decent shape when they did get on the field against Pakistan – but Buttler will be anxious for things to go their way on Saturday, if only to avoid further questions referencing the team’s disastrous ODI World Cup defence last year.
Australia, under the laidback leadership of Mitchell Marsh would love nothing more than to add to the English sense of jeopardy – having helped bundle them out of the tournament in India on the way to taking the crown. Their head to head record is less impressive in T20 however, with England having won six of the last seven completed encounters, as well as that 2010 final.
Despite a wobble with the bat, Australia avoided mishap against Oman earlier in the week, the experience of David Warner and Marcus Stoinis shining through in difficult batting conditions. Surfaces in the Caribbean – not to mention those games staged in the USA – have already had teams scratching their heads; rather than the “slug-fest” England had prepared for, following a high-scoring tour of the Caribbean in December, it looks as if boxing smart may be the way to go.
Speaking of Warner, this could be the last time he faces up against England in national colours – and another match-winning contribution would likely reduce the chances of them meeting again in the knockouts. On the other side of the card is Jofra Archer, fresh from an emotional maiden outing at Kensington Oval and ready to take on Australia for the first time in any format since 2020. Can Mark Wood fire up England’s campaign, as he did during last summer’s Ashes? Will Pat Cummins be back to harass the old enemy once again? Seconds out, it’s almost time to rumble.
Cummins is set to return after being rested for the Oman game, which saw Mitchell Starc leave the field with cramp. Starc is understood to be fine and could keep his place – which would likely see Nathan Ellis miss out. Marsh is still not fit to bowl, with Australia likely to continue with the allrounder combination of Stoinis and Maxwell to give them cover.
Australia (probable XI): David Warner, Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh (capt), Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Josh Inglis (wk), Tim David, Pat Cummins, Nathan Ellis/Mitchell Starc, Adam Zampa, Josh Hazlewood
The one change England may consider is Reece Topley coming in for Wood, with the expectation that there will be some rotation among the seamers through the course of the tournament.
England (probable XI): Phil Salt, Jos Buttler (capt & wk), Will Jacks, Jonny Bairstow, Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Moeen Ali, Chris Jordan, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid, Reece Topley/Mark Wood
[Cricinfo]
Once is coincidence, twice is a clue, and three times is proof.
To paraphrase Agatha Christie, that is the narrative around South Africa’s meeting with Netherlands at this T20 World Cup.
The Dutch beat South Africa at the 2022 tournament and ended their semi-final hopes in a match where South Africa appeared to be sleep walking, and then beat them again at the 2023 ODI World Cup, where they exposed South Africa’s vulnerability in the chase. If they to do the treble, not only will Netherlands take the lead in Group D, but they will offer conclusive evidence of the threat they pose to Full Members, especially South Africa.
Of course, it will take some doing after South Africa’s opening performance against Sri Lanka, where they reduced their opposition to their lowest T20I total and chased it down in fairly straightforward fashion thanks to the most stable middle-order of their white-ball era. In Aiden Markram, Tristan Stubbs, Heinrich Klaasen and David Miller, South Africa have bankers and big-hitters and, for this match, they also have the advantage of experience. They’ve already played at Eisenhower Park, and have first-hand knowledge that run-scoring doesn’t come easily;Klassen said they are prepared to use their “cricket brains” and play “smarter cricket”.
But the conditions could be good news for Netherlands, who are not naturally a line-up of big hitters and build their innings on a foundation of turning ones into twos. In other words, they tend to take a slightly more conservative approach to batting, which may work well here, but they’ll be wary of the uneven bounce of the surface and will have to come up with plans to counterattack especially against South Africa’s seamers. Their own bowlers were exemplary in Dallas and will look to build on that performance against a line-up that will likely be more proactive than Nepal’s, but who they have managed to keep quiet not once, but twice in the past. Third time’s the charm, they say.
Anrich Nortje’s stunning return to form against Sri Lanka means South Africa may not have to tinker with the bowling combination, and Gerald Coetzee and Tabraiz Shamsi may have to wait their turns to get a game. The batting line-up should be unchanged, with no space for Ryan Rickelton yet.
South Africa: Quinton de Kock (wk), Reeza Hendricks, Aiden Markam, Tristan Stubbs, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), David Miller, Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Ottneil Baartman, Anrich Nortje
Conditions in New York may tempt Netherlands to include an extra seamer and they have Kyle Klein in their squad. But it could come at the expense of a shortened batting line-up and they may not want to risk that.
Netherlands: Michael Levitt, Max O’Dowd, Vikramjit Singh, Sybrand Engelbrecht, Scott Edwards (capt, wk), Bas de Leede, Teja Nidamanuru, Logan van Beek, Tim Pringle, Paul van Meekeren, Vivian Kingma
[Cricinfo]
Nuwan Thushara’s last over brought Sri Lanka screaming back into the match,as he first bowled Rishad Hossain, and then nailed Taskin Ahmed in front of the stumps with a pinpoint swinging yorker. This left Bangladesh eight wickets down, with 12 runs still to get.
However, the experienced Mahmudullah was at the crease for Bangladesh, and despite some further nervy moments, pushed Bangladesh across the line off the last ball of the 19th over.
But this was a match chiefly decided by Bangladesh’s own outstanding bowling. Mustafizur Rahman was the best among them, using shorter lengths and his cutters efficiently, to claim figures of 3 for 17. Rishad Hossain’s three-for through the middle overs also kept Sri Lanka quiet.
Mustafizur was instrumental in Sri Lanka’s downward spiral through the middle overs, which culminated in a crash-and-burn end. Ultimately, their inability to find boundaries, or even rotate strike against good Bangladesh bowling resulted in their downfall. A score of 125 for 9 always seemed poor on a decent pitch, even if their bowlers made a match of it in the end.
Brief scores:
Bangladesh 125 for 8 in 19 overs (Towhid Hridoy 40, Litton Das 36; Dhanajaya de Silva 1-11, Nuwan Thushara 4-18, Wanidu Hasaranga 2-32, Matheesha Pathirana 1-27) beat Sri Lanka124 for 9 in 20 overs (Pathum Nissanka 47, Dhananjaya de Silva 21; Tanzim Hasan Sakib 1-24, Taskin Ahmed 2-25, Mustafizur Rahman 3-17, Rishad Hossain 3-22) by two wickets
[Cricinfo]
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